For the most part, I’m thankful for all that works effectively in our first world society. We’re so incredibly fortunate, and the phrase “first world problem” for when you complain about something is totally appropriate.
BUT…. The big “but.”
Here’s my rant. When a company or business decides to undertake repair work that affects your daily life, they should INFORM you. Let the customer know. Send an email. Give us a call. Text that message. It’s so easy.
Not being informed in this manner reminds me of the airlines and how many customer complaints they could avoid when a flight is delayed by just keeping the passengers informed. “We’re experiencing weather delays coming out of Charlotte for those of you waiting at Gate 32A. Currently we are 37 minutes behind schedule. We will keep you posted with regular updates.”
If you’re an airline, that’s the least you can do. You can’t change the weather. As a customer, how can you get upset? There’s nothing you can do. Life moves on.
When you DON’T get informed on something simple though, then you have every right to get upset. Recently, for example, our phone/internet service went whacky. We’d been having trouble for months and finally one morning there was no connectivity at all. No matter the fix you applied, we still came up “not connected.”
This precipitated a call to our cable provider, Spectrum. OMG, they were performing service and hadn’t let us know. And DOUBLE OMG, service was going to be out the entire day. But, wait, yes, “service will be back later this evening,” we were told.
Sigh of relief. “We can still connect with the world later today. Yippee.”
My wife and I both checked that evening with no success. Give them a call. “Oh, no, we expect service back in the morning.”
Check in the morning. No dice. Call again. “We expect service back later today.”
Yes, service did finally come back later that day. There was no happiness, only aggravation with the lack of communication.
Think if Spectrum had let us know of the upcoming service BEFORE it occurred. First of all, wow, would that be a first and awesome to have a company proactively keeping you posted on a major service update. Major brownie points in my book.
In addition to that, you can plan. Knowing service will be out, if there are any major work or personal projects that require connectivity and you need to send messages and information through the atmosphere on a deadline, then you’d know to get it done before the service interruption.
None of this is difficult to grasp on an intelligence or intuitive level: communicate with people; explain things; inform them to the best of your ability. At least the customer becomes aware of what’s next. Somehow that concept seems hard to grasp for some businesses.
We were thankful service got restored because a day later, Spectrum sent a service guy out without informing us to dig a line to lay cable through our side yard. Here we go again. They laid it, but who knows when they’re going to bury it? Maybe they’ll give us a call.
BUT…. The big “but.”
Here’s my rant. When a company or business decides to undertake repair work that affects your daily life, they should INFORM you. Let the customer know. Send an email. Give us a call. Text that message. It’s so easy.
Not being informed in this manner reminds me of the airlines and how many customer complaints they could avoid when a flight is delayed by just keeping the passengers informed. “We’re experiencing weather delays coming out of Charlotte for those of you waiting at Gate 32A. Currently we are 37 minutes behind schedule. We will keep you posted with regular updates.”
If you’re an airline, that’s the least you can do. You can’t change the weather. As a customer, how can you get upset? There’s nothing you can do. Life moves on.
When you DON’T get informed on something simple though, then you have every right to get upset. Recently, for example, our phone/internet service went whacky. We’d been having trouble for months and finally one morning there was no connectivity at all. No matter the fix you applied, we still came up “not connected.”
This precipitated a call to our cable provider, Spectrum. OMG, they were performing service and hadn’t let us know. And DOUBLE OMG, service was going to be out the entire day. But, wait, yes, “service will be back later this evening,” we were told.
Sigh of relief. “We can still connect with the world later today. Yippee.”
My wife and I both checked that evening with no success. Give them a call. “Oh, no, we expect service back in the morning.”
Check in the morning. No dice. Call again. “We expect service back later today.”
Yes, service did finally come back later that day. There was no happiness, only aggravation with the lack of communication.
Think if Spectrum had let us know of the upcoming service BEFORE it occurred. First of all, wow, would that be a first and awesome to have a company proactively keeping you posted on a major service update. Major brownie points in my book.
In addition to that, you can plan. Knowing service will be out, if there are any major work or personal projects that require connectivity and you need to send messages and information through the atmosphere on a deadline, then you’d know to get it done before the service interruption.
None of this is difficult to grasp on an intelligence or intuitive level: communicate with people; explain things; inform them to the best of your ability. At least the customer becomes aware of what’s next. Somehow that concept seems hard to grasp for some businesses.
We were thankful service got restored because a day later, Spectrum sent a service guy out without informing us to dig a line to lay cable through our side yard. Here we go again. They laid it, but who knows when they’re going to bury it? Maybe they’ll give us a call.